No, I find that’s everyday life. I live deep in the countryside – I see things that you and I would call cruel most days. We have grouse moors up the road from us; they’ll be on fire within a week because they’re burning off the heather. I wholly don’t agree with a lot of things that go on, but they do go on, and they surround children. In those days, kittens were drowned; no working-class family could afford to go to the vet’s to get rid of an unwanted litter; now they’re abandoned, but the same sort of thing is happening. And I don’t think you can pretend it isn’t; you can’t really have a lovely Enid Blyton world when it’s convenient…I think kids do realise life is pretty dark as well as light.


How important is it to you to involve the natural world in your books?


The best thing in my life, and has been since I can remember, has been the natural world. We lived in a very small circuit, maybe a three-mile radius, but we still got to the riverbanks, and the marshes, and my dad’s allotment. We still looked after the birds and the hedgehogs. When I was lonely at school, I used to take myself back to them – there was a tree I was particularly fond of…I was a bit of a fish out of water at school, because we didn’t have a television, and we were brought up very oddly…so I retreated into natural history. I used to volunteer on a nature reserve, and learnt quite a lot of science, because they would just let you stay there all summer if you would sleep in their camp beds and record the species – and it got me to St Andrews’ university to study Botany and Zoology. It really has shaped my life. So you see it’s always been a part of me, and if I missed it out, it would be like missing out a colour; as though I only wrote about green and red things and missed out blue and yellow.


Your Exiles trilogy, about the wonderfully chaotic Conroy sisters, was first published in the 1990s, and is now being re-issued. You grew up the oldest of four sisters. How much of your own experience did you draw on in writing the Conroy girls?


When The Exiles was originally published, I was as green as grass – I wrote it about myself and my sisters. I didn’t even change their names. Chris Kloet, my editor, said ‘You ought to change your sisters’ names,’ which I did; but I remember my sister Robin shouting ‘You didn’t change my birthday! You can still tell it’s me! I’ll sue you if you ever write another book!’ I wrote their characters, I used their birthdays; I had a sister who kept a diary [of the food she ate], and she doesn’t like that to be remembered now, but I put it in. And we did fish in a bucket; we did that for hours, it was a family hobby. My dad would give us two sticks and some string and a bucket of water and we just sat there. No television, you see, and we hadn’t learned to read, so what else can you do? Do you know, this lockdown, I would have fished in a bucket if I’d thought of it.


Books mentioned, all published by Macmillan Children’s Books The Swallows’ Flight, 978-1529033335, £12.99 hbk The Skylarks’ War, 978-1509894963, £7.99pbk The Exiles, 978-1529011562, £6.99 pbk The Exiles at Home, 978-1529011586, £6.99 pbk The Exiles in Love, 978-1529011616, £6.99 pbk


Imogen Russell Williams is a journalist and editorial consultant specialising in children’s literature and YA.


Books for Keeps No.248 May 2021 13


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